I know with the Austrian hostage in Yemen, there have yet to be any concrete demands, and it's still not clear who he's being held by. One report was that he was kidnapped by a tribe but then sold to a group with connections to Al Qaeda.

In both cases, I would think if it was just a local tribe who wanted cash, they'd probably come out with a ransom demand pretty quickly. If it's someone like Al Quaeda or the Taliban, maybe they want to hold on to them as a trading chip they could put to use later. That's just conjecture on my part.

Maybe. I do hope they're okay. That liver condition Caitlin's parents said she had sounds pretty serious. I really am wondering what prompted Josh to say, 'Let's take a trip to Afghanistan.' I think I'd rather swim with a really hungry shark than go to that hellhole.

I googled his full name. One article I stumbled on said they had been travelling in Central Asia and had planned to look for work with an aid organisation in Afghanistan. Sounds noble, but with a wife with a serious medical condition and a baby on the way, it's unfathomably stupid imo.

EDIT: Here's the link to which I referred. No idea if it's a reliable story.

I met her at C3 (you can see her in this vid in the red costume and face paint on her cheeks)- her and Leto II were my same-hotel test audience for my AOTC re-edit screening (which sadly could not proceed due to unforeseeable technical issues, as I couldn't have previewed the disc prior to the screening since it literally finished burning minutes before my cab to the airport for my flight to Indy arrived).

She was also with us at the one lunch gathering we had- I still remember her praying before eating and how that was the first time I had ever seen someone do that in public beyond a special holiday gathering/event/etc.

Between that and how concerned she seemed to be with parental permission, makes it an even more surreal situation for her to be where she was. I mean, I also remember the things Dajuan speaks of, but still. Hope they get back safe so they can look forward to a long life of people telling them how stupid they were to go there in the first place, as well as more Celebrations.

When an Austrian was kidnapped in Yemen just before Christmas along with two Finnish citizens, I thought, "Jeesh, doesn't anyone check their state department/foreign ministry's warning lists?" But who the hell even needs to check one of those lists to know that travelling to Afghanistan is dangerous?

Click to expand...

When I was travelling in the Middle East, I quickly learned that the State Department's travel ratings are ridiculous. According to them, you'd think we shouldn't be travelling in the US, much less undeveloped foreign countries! For frequent travellers, it gets easy to pretty much ignore them. I completely understand how they might have felt reasonably secure travelling near or in Afghanistan. That said, I really hope they're okay and just having too much fun to call home.

Holy carp....The Toronto Star has years worth of archived articles on Boyle! And to think we teased Ossie about being a terrorist and here was this guy on here all along? Do you think he and Connemara converted and went native? Sorry, but that's my suspicion after reading some of those articles.